It occurred me while reading this that the most effective successor to Bitcoin wouldn't be a successor at all, it'd just be a more polished front to the same blockchain that we're already using.

Someone could take the existing client, re-skin it and replace all instances of "Bitcoin" with something else ("emoney"?).  Start their own project forums, exchange, and mining pool, and start marketing them.  Voila, they've got a "brand new" cryptocurrency, without the image problems that Bitcoin currently has, and without having to start from scratch on bootstrapping the value.

Move lively forum full of colorful characters to its own domain.  Stress that it is unofficial and not affiliated with the developers of the Bitcoin client.  Set up dedicated user support forum (at weusecoins?), restrict discussion to just that.  Colorful characters get to do their own thing on unofficial/political/seedy forum without scaring the squares away from using bitcoins.

Wow, really dude?  You lose the thread.

There's currently a push to split these forums off from bitcoin.org and move them to their own domain:

http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2011/06/15/2#l1062161 (starting at 3:28)

As one of the anarchist lunatics, I really wish that my fellow crazies would take Jessy Kang's advice.  Bitcoin will benefit the anarchist project merely by continuing to exist and grow.  There's no need to jeopardize that by trying to shove our ideology down the throats of the normals.

Three of my favorites:

Leek Spin (plenty of remixes available for this one)

Jumping onto White Base

Get on my Horse (auto-loops for your convenience)

Fair enough.

TradersEdgeDice posted a good suggestion (in my opinion) over here.  I'll respond later, but for now I must sleep.  It's been a long night.

I guess I disagree with you a bit more than I thought at first.  This is just a case of the forum admins applying a quick and dirty fix in response to user demand.  I agree with you that the solution chosen is unacceptable.  However, the trolling had extremely little to do with the price drop.  The forum already had plenty of loud detractors, and the price has been steadily climbing.  The project leads are part of the core ideologically-motivated group that is in this for the long haul; they don't need to worry about short-term price fluctuations anyway.  I just don't buy this "profit protection" theory of yours.

The price drop was the result of a "perfect storm" situation for bitcoin.  After having the largest price gains we've ever seen (as far as I know), MtGox started having trouble with accepting Dwolla deposits (currently the primary means of turning USD into BTC) due to an API change on Dwolla's end, restricting the flow of new money.  S3052, our resident technical analyst, was predicting a short-term downward trend.  It's fairly well-known that the price already tends to slump on the weekends, due to banks being closed.  On top of all that, SilkRoad (the infamous bitcoin drug bazaar) shut down for a day or two.  Like them or not, they're a fairly unique feature of the bitcoin economy, and without them, there's a reduced demand for BTC.  Put all that together, and the situation is ripe for profit-taking by bitcoin speculators.

I'm bumping this topic because it deserves consideration, especially in light of recent events.

I wrote in this thread:

Perhaps people might be more willing to consider this proposal now, in light of recent events?

I generally agree with what Jessy Kang has written, however the problem that needed to be addressed was that a lot of the newcomers were abusive.  It's fine to be skeptical, but a level of civility still needs to be maintained.  We don't want the Greater Internet Fuckwads driving away the genuinely curious and interested newcomers (along with everyone else, for that matter).

Unfortunately, a lot of libertarians (the dominant faction around here) feel the need to apply "laissez faire" to forum moderation policy, so I expect getting anything like this implemented will be an uphill battle.

I'm guessing these aren't for sale anymore?

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, I think it's best of left-libertarians (among which I count myself) and MFABU-type libertarian socialists to work on building systems that work on top of Bitcoin.  A while back I was working on a digital bearer certificate system, and one of my goals was to use it to create a labor-based currency.  Trouble is, currency needs to be fungible, and labor is not fungible.  You can try to standardize it somewhat, but it's always going to be unwieldy and involve a good deal of overhead.  By comparison, Bitcoin is simple and elegant.

As for what systems to build, one that comes to mind is friend-to-friend microlending networks, to address the "no one has any currency" issue.  There'd be some issues to work out with denominating this in BTC, especially at the moment, since no one's quite figured out how to make BTC loans work at all.  Maybe debts could be denominated in something else (gold?), and then settled in BTC.

I had resolved to go long, but I'm having trouble sticking to it.  It's not that I doubt Bitcoin's long-term prospects, it's just that I want more coins.   

You know, you could get the full $100 if you used one of the free pools.  BTCGuild is quite good, doesn't charge you anything, and isn't a threat to the stability of the network.

Dude probably just wants to buy some bitcoins for cheap.

+1 to trentzb

Welcome to the Bitcoin community. 

Your post should be okay.  There's a few advertisements for "porn for bitcoins" floating around the forum that don't seem to be a problem.  You may want to try putting an entry on the Trade page on the wiki as well.  There were some porn links on there that someone removed on the (somewhat ridiculous) technicality that uncensored porn is illegal in Japan, where the wiki is hosted.  I've never heard of BDSM being illegal there though.

I think this is a good idea, but it will probably encounter a lot of resistance.

Bump.

Bump.

Wow, they're fast.